Hello folks,
I’ve been an unpaid carer (now aged 53, single male) to both my parents since 2012. My late Dad died in 2016 and my mother’s mental health is now deteriorating.
While she doesn’t have a formal diagnosis of dementia, it is suspected by one of her GPs in the practice we attend in County Donegal. She has had delusional incidents since last year. Lately, she is refusing to go into respite care (available to me every 6-8 weeks) because she claims that the carers in the respite home are facilitating sexual relations with the patients. Right up to this week my mother has refused to allow me to report this. However, the local Public Health Nurse has confronted my mother with her refusal of respite, and my mother is incandescent with rage that, as she sees it, she is being “put out of her house”.
I’ve been on antidepressants since early 2017 and have to get up at nights, usually one night in three, to toilet my mother. She does not want to pass water in her pad in case she wets the bed. I get three hours off each day Monday to Friday and the Health Service provide carers to get her up and put her to bed. Nevertheless, each time since my father died that I have wanted to go away for a few days there has always been friction around this, despite my providing live in help for her in my very rare absences. Now, since an extended hospital stay last year to do with her chronic arthritis, she is on the respite lists, but considers this to be like Colditz. Despite this, the local public hospital is friendly, has lots of activities, and provides excellent care for the two single weeks my mother was in at the end of March and the end of May.
My mother has alienated my brother in London and now my sister in law, due to her rigidity and bad temper. Few of her friends and relations want to see her due to her harsh judgements, and my Scottish fiancée walks on eggshells around her on her few visits here. My own health mentally and physically is suffering. However my mother is constantly angry about even the idea that I need any break, citing the help being given as sufficient break for me. She cites looking after her own parents before their deaths in rural Ireland in the 1950s. However, it is now getting to the point that I can’t look after her anymore due to her rigidity. Judging from her bad temper, this will cause her to break with my brother and me when that inevitably happens.
Any views on this situation? To my mind it will not end well with my own health broken if I do nothing.r
I’ve been an unpaid carer (now aged 53, single male) to both my parents since 2012. My late Dad died in 2016 and my mother’s mental health is now deteriorating.
While she doesn’t have a formal diagnosis of dementia, it is suspected by one of her GPs in the practice we attend in County Donegal. She has had delusional incidents since last year. Lately, she is refusing to go into respite care (available to me every 6-8 weeks) because she claims that the carers in the respite home are facilitating sexual relations with the patients. Right up to this week my mother has refused to allow me to report this. However, the local Public Health Nurse has confronted my mother with her refusal of respite, and my mother is incandescent with rage that, as she sees it, she is being “put out of her house”.
I’ve been on antidepressants since early 2017 and have to get up at nights, usually one night in three, to toilet my mother. She does not want to pass water in her pad in case she wets the bed. I get three hours off each day Monday to Friday and the Health Service provide carers to get her up and put her to bed. Nevertheless, each time since my father died that I have wanted to go away for a few days there has always been friction around this, despite my providing live in help for her in my very rare absences. Now, since an extended hospital stay last year to do with her chronic arthritis, she is on the respite lists, but considers this to be like Colditz. Despite this, the local public hospital is friendly, has lots of activities, and provides excellent care for the two single weeks my mother was in at the end of March and the end of May.
My mother has alienated my brother in London and now my sister in law, due to her rigidity and bad temper. Few of her friends and relations want to see her due to her harsh judgements, and my Scottish fiancée walks on eggshells around her on her few visits here. My own health mentally and physically is suffering. However my mother is constantly angry about even the idea that I need any break, citing the help being given as sufficient break for me. She cites looking after her own parents before their deaths in rural Ireland in the 1950s. However, it is now getting to the point that I can’t look after her anymore due to her rigidity. Judging from her bad temper, this will cause her to break with my brother and me when that inevitably happens.
Any views on this situation? To my mind it will not end well with my own health broken if I do nothing.r
